


Lyre, Lyre

by vulcansmirk



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1669469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcansmirk/pseuds/vulcansmirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk really should have expected this. He really, really should have. It seemed like the transporter malfunctioned every other time they used it. But it had been almost a year since the last major transporter fuckup, and he’d let his guard down. And now there were two Spocks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lyre, Lyre

**Author's Note:**

> Six months is far too long for a fic that's less than five thousand words. Still, finally, here it is. Based on [this glorious piece of fanart](http://vulcan-ology.tumblr.com/post/67601487942/okay-so-zea-and-i-were-talking-about-star-trek-and) by tumblr user [vulcan-ology](http://vulcan-ology.tumblr.com/) which is based on [this glorious gifset](http://vulcan-ology.tumblr.com/post/67574650888/rectumofglory-its-zq-hair-but-spock-ears-and) (like seriously look at that gifset I actually want to die).
> 
> EDIT: Forgot to mention--I posted this in honor of STID's birthday last Saturday (May 17)!! I know the date well. I have a poster next to my bed declaring it to me when I wake every morning.
> 
> EDIT EDIT: Some kindly readers in the comments brought my attention to the fact that because I didn't properly cite the song lyrics, it looks like I'm taking credit for them. Eep. I was trying to be coy, like, _you recognize this don't you you nerdy little shit,_ but I guess it backfired. Oops. Credit for the song lyrics goes to Leonard Nimoy, who wrote them and then performed them in the TOS episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Apologies for any confusion!

Kirk really should have expected this. He really, really should have.

It seemed like the transporter malfunctioned every other time they used it. It was supposed to be the safest mode of transportation these days, wasn’t it? But Kirk understood why McCoy hated it, especially after they’d both gone to that weird alternate dimension, along with Scotty and Uhura... though Uhura had looked damn fine in that belly shirt. They’d all nearly gotten trapped there, though, and it really was barbaric—Spock had a goatee, and just... it was awful. Kirk had been pretty careful after that—he’d become quite adept at squinting—but it had been almost a year since the last major transporter fuckup, and he’d let his guard down. Stupid, really.

And now there were two Spocks. (Neither of them had goatees, thank god.) One of them stood on the pad with that customary Vulcan rigidity, and if anything his bowl cut looked even more severe. He very nearly concealed all of his astonishment behind a cool, logical mask, but a couple photons of it bled out his eyes. The other one positively _slouched;_ not slouch-slouched, but Vulcan-slouched. Anything less than an iron rod extending straight from the skull to the ass looked like a slouch on a Vulcan. But the thing was that this Spock didn’t look Vulcan at all. His hair was long and thick (perfectly coiffed, goddammit), and his eyes were a warm, almondy-brown hue. The first Spock’s eyes looked black as the void.

The two of them seemed to catch sight of Kirk in the very same instant. The first one hardly blinked, but the other one... _grinned._ A shudder ran down Kirk’s spine.

“Captain—” they both began, and then their heads whipped around with an eerie symmetry. The second one barked out a laugh; the first, after allowing himself a tiny scowl, turned back to Kirk and said, “Captain, I believe the transporter apparatus has malfunctioned again.”

“Yeah, no shit, Spock,” Kirk muttered. The second Spock giggled. (That’s right, _giggled._ Kirk had never thought he’d hear the sound. He wasn’t sure what to do with it now that he had. Bury it, maybe. Possibly build it a shrine in the back of his mind-closet.)

Kirk turned to Scotty. “What happened?” He tried for a tone that was more authoritative than he felt.

Scotty opened his mouth, snapped it shut again. His shoulders rose in tense confusion, and his hands floated aimlessly in front of his chest. “I dunno, sir,” he said. “That ion storm came out of nowhere... For a moment, the display went out, and by the time I could do anything about it, it was back to normal. And now just... this.” Scotty gestured to the four-footed clusterfuck currently standing on the transport pad. “I can’t explain it,” he finished lamely.

Kirk stood tight-lipped for a beat, then turned to the security officer by the door.

“Page Dr. McCoy.”

**

Kirk stood by one of the biobeds in sickbay, watching as Bones examined the two hypos in his hands. Each one contained blood from a different Spock. Both Spocks sat on the edge of the biobed, a careful twelve inches from each other. The chilled-out one was smiling mildly and swinging his feet. The frigid one stared straight ahead with his hands folded in his lap. An impatient silence hung in the room like fog, displacing all the oxygen, it seemed. Kirk felt breathless.

“Jim, this is amazing,” Bones murmured, eyebrows raised. “The DNA registers as belonging to Spock’s family, but it’s like they’re just his brothers.”

A little tremor of worry rang in Kirk’s ears. He made eye contact with each of the two seated figures. “Are you Spock?” he asked them both.

“Yes, captain,” said the frigid one, just as the chill one offered a lazy salute and said, “Yessir.”

“Jim,” Bones whispered, calling Kirk’s attention back to him. Kirk watched him, expectant, but the doctor just stared down at his tricorder, stunned.

“Jim,” he said again, louder. He pointed to the frigid Spock. “He’s a Vulcan.”

Kirk raised one supercilious eyebrow. “Yeah, Bones, I know.”

Bones shook his head. Pointed to the other one. “He,” Bones began, slowly, “is a _human.”_

Kirk blanched.

“What’s that supposed to mean? What the hell are you talking about, Bones?”

“One of them is human,” Bones replied clinically. He seemed to have regained some of his composure. “One is human, and the other is Vulcan. Fully Vulcan. There are no half-breeds here.” On “half-breeds,” the human Spock winced, shooting McCoy a sharp glance. The Vulcan Spock seemed to get even colder, if that was possible.

“Are you...” Kirk shook his head, started again. “Are you saying the transporter _split him in two?”_

Bones nodded. “That’d be my guess.”

Strained silence gave way to Kirk’s exasperated sigh, and his sigh gave way to a groan as he scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Okay,” Kirk said finally. “Okay, we can fix this.” He looked up at Spock—both of him. The Vulcan half clenched his jaw, and the human half gazed back at Kirk, worried, but also oddly trusting.

“We’ll fix this,” Kirk muttered.

**

Scotty assured the captain that yes, they could fix this. However, he’d need a day or two to recalibrate the transporter, and they’d need to find another ion storm. The Vulcan Spock located one, about a day away at warp four. Kirk bumped it up to warp six.

They tried to let both Spocks work together at first, but it turned out that they didn’t get along very well. The Vulcan Spock was diligent at the science console, to the point that he almost never spoke; the human Spock, meanwhile, hung close over the Vulcan one’s shoulder and cooed excitedly when he saw something that interested him. “Fascinating,” he would breathe. The _fascinating_ came from the human half. Who knew?

His counterpart’s utter lack of regard for personal space got on the Vulcan’s nerves quickly. Soft nudges turned to admonitions to retreat, and those turned into snapped demands. Kirk watched the tension rising in the Vulcan’s shoulders almost until the conflict came to blows. (Vulcan-Spock had a temper, it seemed.) Before any punches could be thrown, Kirk leapt out of the captain’s chair, loped over to the science console, grabbed human-Spock by the elbow, and led him to the turbolift.

They stepped in wordlessly, and silence hung about their heads for a moment after the doors closed. Then Spock looked at his captain, a tiny smile pricking at his lips, and though he spoke hardly louder than a rumble his voice was jarring to Kirk in the quiet.

“Am I confined to quarters now, Captain?” There was a shit-eating grin hiding in his eyes if ever Kirk had seen one. Which, well, maybe he hadn’t _seen_ many, but he’d certainly given out quite a few, so he should damn well know.

Kirk just raised an eyebrow. “Confined? No. I mean, I could.” He peered sidelong at Spock. “I’ve certainly got grounds for it. But that wasn’t my intention. Close call there, Commander.”

Spock grinned, and his very white teeth and his very pink cheeks and his very fluffy hair and his very warm eyes set Kirk on edge. He pulled his hands into surreptitious white-knuckled fists behind his back, and tried very hard not to think about cheeks or hair or teeth or eyes at all.

“Where are you taking me, then?” Spock asked, looking away and leaning back onto the railing, arms outstretched on either side, fingers twisting around the handrail, and oh god now Kirk was thinking about hands.

He realized he hadn’t actually thought ahead far enough to pick a destination. Kirk’s mental microfiche whirred for half a moment before he ordered the turbolift, “Observation deck.”

The stars grounded him. Kirk had always found it ironic that he felt most stable when literally nothing lay beneath his feet—nothing but the ship’s hull, humming with the turn of the engines, and beyond that just the vacuum. He and Spock stepped through the doorway, and as the doors swished shut behind them the lights went down and the stars winked at them through the transparent aluminum windows. There was a comfortable kind of stillness here; even at warp, the ship was so far away from any other object that it seemed to stand motionless amidst the pinprick lights, just one more object adrift in the firmament. There were times at which Kirk was comforted by the idea of his own cosmic insignificance.

Spock plunked down in one of the chairs facing the window, his eyes never straying from that which lay beyond.

“It all looks white from here,” he said, his voice small and reverent. “But there are so many different colors of light out there. So many different types of radiation beyond the visual spectrum. And every star is different.” He glanced up at Kirk. “You know that?”

The Captain thought he could see a thousand different types of radiation in Spock’s eyes alone.

Spock turned back toward the sky. “They’re all different. Every one,” he said. “The manifold inanimate engineers of the universe come together in incalculable different ways to produce innumerable variations of the same basic form. And they all look the same, but they’re not. Not at all.”

By this point, Kirk had ceased watching the stars and instead was watching Spock, this strange, mellowed-out variation of the man he knew. He watched the glimmer in Spock’s eyes, half starlight and half something else; he watched the way his hands grasped at the seat beneath him, itching to leap into the air and illustrate the majesty of the universe in a way his words could not. Kirk had thought he would have to keep reminding himself that this person, however strange—however _human_ —was in fact Spock. But, oddly enough, he didn’t. He knew it in the hollow of his bones.

Kirk turned back to the window, cracking a smile. “Didn’t know you were such a poet,” he said.

Spock laughed, short and quiet. “Not generally with words. I’d like to think it manifests in other ways.”

“Other ways?” Kirk looked back at Spock. “Like what?”

Spock smiled, and his lips were lined with melancholy. “Well, actually, it doesn’t normally come out at all.” He paused, shrugged. “When it does, I think it comes through music.”

“What, that Vulcan instrument of yours?”

“My lyre, yeah.” Spock regarded Kirk for a moment, searching in Kirk’s eyes as he lounged against the back of the chair. Then he stood, the movement sinuous, liquid, and came to stand before Kirk. Half his face was cast in starlight, the other in shadow.

“You’ve heard me play, haven’t you?” he asked, and Kirk hadn’t thought it possible to inject so much nonchalance into a breath that feared to disturb the air. “My father once told me that Vulcan emotions run even more deeply than human ones. That lyre is the only real way I know to express what I feel, what my culture won’t allow me to say.”

“You talk like you’re still a Vulcan,” Kirk said, his voice on the edge of a tremor. This was much closer than Spock had ever allowed him to be before. A warm tang floated in the air between them, like cinnamon.

Spock offered him a rueful smile. “What I am isn’t just down to DNA,” he said. “It’s the way I was raised, the way my mind works. It’s who I am. If my father had been a human, and I’d still been born and raised on Vulcan, I doubt I’d be very different.”

“I think you’re very different.” The air hardly whistled between Kirk’s lips.

Spock smiled a Cheshire-Cat smile. “Maybe a few things have changed,” he said, and he drew closer still, his face moving past Kirk’s, his smiling lips brushing Kirk’s ear, his fingers ghosting across Kirk’s forearm and leaving goosebumps. “This is quite liberating,” he whispered, his voice a gossamer thread curling around Kirk’s spine. One cool, slender hand wrapped around Kirk’s arm, the other around the nape of his neck. “See? I can touch you painlessly,” he said.

Kirk found himself leaning into Spock, letting their chests brush together. “Does it normally hurt?”

“Well, it’s not always painful,” he murmured, running a thumb along Kirk’s jaw. “But tasting someone’s thoughts can be very unpleasant if you aren’t expecting it.”

They were swaying now, almost like a dance.

“But this...” Spock murmured, his chest vibrating against Kirk’s, “...this is what a human feels. No thoughts. Just skin.” He spun them both with a slow flourish. “Just you against me. Just this.” Kirk could hear his smile. “Simple.”

Kirk imagined the wind whistling between the stars, rattling his bones, creating an eerie tune set to the simultaneous beat of their hearts. Spock dipped his head smoothly down to Kirk’s shoulder and breathed against his throat. His lips brushed Kirk’s collarbone in what might have been a kiss.

Spock sighed. “But liberty stops here, you see,” he said at a normal volume, pulling his head away and taking half a step back. “He’s the one who would take anything you’ll give, but I know better.”

He stepped back a full two steps, cocked his head slightly, and smiled a sad, fathomless smile.

“I would give you every star in the sky,” he said, “but I can’t make you take that from me.”

And with no preamble and no further explanation, Spock turned and walked out of the room. The doors closed behind him, and Kirk was alone.

**

By the time Kirk had reassembled himself, the human Spock was long gone. A security officer told him he’d returned to his quarters, so at least he wasn’t causing any more trouble. (Briefly, Kirk worried that Spock’s Vulcan and human halves would run into each other in what was technically both their quarters. He hoped he wouldn’t find a new green and red paint job in there.) Beta shift having just ended, Kirk headed down to one of the rec rooms, hoping to head off the Vulcan Spock. He walked in just as Uhura was plying the Vulcan for a song. His lyre rested in the chair beside him.

Kirk stopped and leaned in the doorway, smiling a little as he remembered what the human Spock had said. _It’s the only real way I know to express what I feel._

“Please, Spock?” Uhura pleaded. “You hardly ever play for us anymore.”

“I fail to understand the relevance of that fact,” replied Spock stiffly. He may as well have crossed his arms and huffed.

Uhura batted her eyes at him. “Please?”

Spock happened to glance up then and caught Kirk’s eye. His mouth had fallen open in preparation for speech, and unless Kirk was mistaken he was about to disappoint Uhura once again; but when his eyes met Kirk’s, he stopped.

He looked torn, Kirk thought, though it was only visible in his eyes. Kirk nodded at him, and shot him an encouraging smile.

After a beat, Spock’s shoulders dropped infinitesimally. He reached over and picked up the lyre.

There was a brief, quiet bout of cheers from the peanut gallery, and Uhura clapped excitedly, a wide smile on her face. Then an expectant quiet fell over the room. Spock closed his eyes.

When the music came, it was like the room materialized inside a block of ice. Kirk felt like he was back on Delta Vega, and the winds had died down until they merely skated across the tundra, creating the haunting facsimile of voices. Spock’s eyes remained closed; his fingers moved with the deft assurance of one who has practiced this art all his life, and every stroke was slow, deliberate. His long fingers gripped the neck of the lyre as though the whole instrument were woven out of wisps of cloud, or swirls of snow. Each note yawned into the silence, a gaping chasm in the ice.

_Take care, young ladies, and value your wine._

Kirk was torn between _hot damn, Spock_ and _fuck, he can sing._ Spock’s eyes remained closed, his face composed.

_Be watchful of young men in their velvet prime._  
 _Deeply they’ll swallow from your finest kegs,_  
 _Then swiftly be gone, leaving bitter dregs._

Spock’s eyes opened, but remained on the floor.

_Aah, bitter dregs._

_With smiling words and tender touch,_  
 _Man offers little, and asks for so much._  
 _He loves in the breathless excitement of night,_  
 _Then leaves with your treasure in cold morning light._

_Aah, in cold morning light._

For all the power it had to dilate time, the piece was short, and soon Spock’s fingers drifted to a halt. The whole room took a moment just to breathe. In that moment, Spock looked up at Kirk. His eyes were gaping chasms all their own.

Their gazes remained locked as the room burst into applause. Kirk didn’t clap.

When there was quiet once more, Kirk said only, “Mr. Spock, when you have a minute, bring today’s reports up to my quarters.” Then he made a smooth about-face, and left.

**

 _What are you doing, Jim?_ Kirk’s internal logician demanded. (The voice of reason in Kirk’s head always sounded weirdly like Bones.) _Why’d you invite him here, alone? After what the other one said? ‘He’s the one who would take anything you’ll give.’ Sounds a hell of a lot like ‘AVOID AVOID AVOID’ to me!_

Kirk ignored the voice. (He usually did.) He knew exactly why he’d done what he’d done, even if he hadn’t thought it all the way through before opening his mouth. The memory of the human Spock’s breath on his clavicle, and the smooth, haunted voice of the Vulcan, was all the explanation he needed.

 _I can’t make you take that from me._ What did that even mean? Kirk would freely admit that he and Spock had their differences, but all blunders and derogatory references aside, he liked that he and Spock were so different; he liked that Spock challenged him. And when things gelled between them... Sometimes, Kirk would stop in the middle of a corridor, lay his hand on the bulkhead, and just feel the purr of the engines, and it centered him. There were times when he stood next to Spock and felt the exact same thing—that gentle hum. That constant energy.

Kirk wasn’t sure there was anything Spock could give him that he wouldn’t happily snap up.

The door chirped.

“Come in,” Kirk called, his heart constricting.

The door slid open with a whisper, and Spock stood, stiff-backed and flat-faced, in the corridor. After a moment’s pause, he stepped just far enough into the room for the door to shut behind him.

“Captain,” he said. “I have brought you the reports you requested.”

“Yeah, thanks. Just put them over here.” Kirk gestured to the desk.

Spock took three long steps across the room and laid the folders down where directed. Less than two feet from Kirk now, he asked, “Will that be all?”

“...Yes. Yes, you’re free to go. Uh, but careful—I think your other half is in your quarters at the moment.”

Spock nodded tersely. “Thank you for the warning, sir.”

Kirk smiled in reply.

Spock had made an about-face and was halfway back across the room when Kirk piped up again. “You played beautifully tonight,” he said, mentally hitting himself. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like that.”

“I am pleased you enjoyed it, sir.” Spock neither looked nor sounded very pleased.

“That song...” Kirk started, then stopped. Then told himself, _Fuck it._ “The other Spock told me something interesting today.”

Spock tensed. “Did he indeed?”

“Yeah.” Kirk got up and crossed to Spock, slowly, casually. “He said that you only ever really express yourself through your music.”

“It is a time-honored tradition among my people, Captain. Most of us play musical instruments. The lyre is the oldest of the instruments on Vulcan.”

“That so?” Kirk was standing before Spock now, clearly a little too close for comfort. He extended his hand toward Spock’s, but didn’t touch him. “He also said that touching people is painful for you.”

Spock raised an eyebrow, then closed the distance between their hands, brushing his index and middle fingers against Kirk’s little one.

“I feel no pain now,” he whispered, and it was one part defiance, one part implication.

“I’m glad,” Kirk whispered back. The air in the room seemed thinner somehow.

Spock stared into Kirk’s eyes, uncharacteristically brazen. Kirk realized he’d been wrong before—there was a warmth in the black of this Spock’s irises, if he looked hard enough.

Spock retracted his hand. “If that is all, Captain?”

Kirk blinked. “Uh, yeah. You can go.”

Spock nodded, about-faced, and left. Kirk was alone.

**

“What in blazes did you think you were doing, Jim? Inviting a Vulcan to meet you in your quarters, _alone,_ when you’ve been warned that he’s completely unpredictable? ‘Take anything you’ll give’ sounds pretty damn predatory to me. You know what sane creatures do when they encounter a predator, Jim? They book it the fuck out of there.”

Kirk rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Bones, I get it. I don’t need you to lecture me again.”

“What do you mean, _again?”_

“Uh, nothing. Anyway, nothing happened. He put down his papers, he touched my hand, and then he left. The whole exchange lasted less than a minute. I just want to pick your brain here, because I can’t make heads or tails of the touching.”

“He’s probably buttering you up before he sticks you in the oven. And by the oven, I mean his mouth. And not in the good way.”

“It just felt _significant_ somehow, y’know? If it were anyone else I’d just dismiss it, like, stupid hand-touching, whatever, but it’s _not_ anyone else. It’s Spock.”

“Listen, Jim. I don’t pretend to know what goes on between those pointy ears—”

“Yes, you do.”

“—but I do know one thing. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What did the other Spock say, that _he_ would take anything from you? You assumed he was talking about his other half, but what if there’s a third Spock to think about? What if the person you’re looking for is the person who got split in two in the transporter?”

Kirk blinked.

“Dr. McCoy, when did you get so smart?”

“I’ve always been smart. You just don’t pay attention.”

**

Both Spocks stood on the transporter pad. If Kirk didn’t know any better, he’d think the Vulcan Spock was sneering. The human Spock had a bruise forming around his left eye.

Bones leaned toward Jim and murmured, “I wonder if the black eye will survive recombination.”

The Vulcan shot Bones a murderous glance.

“Alrighty then,” Scotty exclaimed from behind the console. “Transporter’s been recalibrated—which took me hours, by the way, a thank you wouldn’t go amiss—and we’re positioned above the ion storm. I’ve also refitted the deflector dish to absorb the storm’s energy at a regulated rate—you’re welcome—so we don’t involuntarily overload the systems.”

“Does the transporter need to be operated in any special way?”

“Shouldn’t, sir.”

“Then if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to flip the switch myself.”

“Jim, are you sure that’s—”

“Bones, it’s just a transporter switch. It’s not brain surgery. Scotty’s not worried, is he?”

“Uh, well—”

“See? It’ll be fine. If the two of you wouldn’t mind leaving us alone?”

They both paused, sizing Kirk up. Bones was the first to leave, pursing his lips and squeezing Kirk’s shoulder before he went.

Scotty wavered, still standing halfway behind the console, staring down at the controls.

“I know it’s not complicated, sir,” he began slowly, “but if something goes wrong...”

“Scotty.” The engineer looked up. “This is on me.”

Scotty looked far from convinced.

Kirk shot him a tight smile. “It’ll be alright,” he said. He hoped it would be, anyway. He’d been wondering for the last few hours whether his friend would survive recombination.

Scotty considered his captain for a moment, then sighed. “If you say so. We should have accumulated enough energy for the process by now. So, whenever you’re ready.”

One final, worried stroke of his hand along the transporter console, and Scotty crossed to the door, disappearing through it with a final-sounding _whish._

Kirk positioned himself at the console, looking up to meet his friend’s eyes. Both Spocks stared back at him, petrified.

“You ready, Spock?”

The Vulcan one broke eye contact and stared straight ahead. The human one said simply, “No,” but cracked a little smile.

Kirk breathed deeply. “Okay,” he whispered. “Here goes nothing.”

He placed two fingers on the console, where the controls were marked on the screen, and pushed them away from himself slowly. Long straight lines lit up beneath his fingers, and the transporter began to whir. It reached normal transporter volume and sailed right past it until the vibrations rattled in the bulkheads; the lights started flickering, and just as the transporter became deafening, they surged, and then everything gave out and the room went dark with a _pop._ Scotty cursed from outside the door, and his footsteps could be heard rushing down to engineering. Kirk thought he smelled smoke.

The whirring hadn’t even died completely before Kirk leapt out from behind the console. Two Spocks had been replaced with one, on the pad directly between where the two had been standing. As soon as all the machinery went out Spock had collapsed. He now lay across all three transport pads, apparently unconscious.

“Spock,” Kirk called, kneeling beside the prone form and pulling Spock’s head into his lap. “Spock! Come on, buddy, wake up.”

Spock groaned. He turned his head and pressed his face hard into Kirk’s thigh, bringing one hand up to his own temple.

“Oh, god. Spock? Spock, talk to me.”

“A moment, please, Captain,” the half-Vulcan, half-human ground out.

Kirk barked out a laugh. “Thank god,” he murmured. Kirk brushed Spock’s bangs off his forehead and laid the back of his hand there, though he was pretty sure the transporter didn’t cause fevers. Pretty sure. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?”

“I am not afflicted with a Terran flu virus, Captain. You need not check my body temperature. In any case, you will find it is significantly lower than your own.”

“If you start to feel normal, then I’ll worry.” Kirk rolled his eyes. “You’re alright, though? Not missing any important bits? Any bits. Just to be clear, they’re all important.”

“I am fine, Captain. My mind is merely adjusting to the presence of two separate memory timelines. It feels as though I have lived two days for your one.”

Kirk’s heart lurched. “So, so uh, you remember everything, then?”

A moment of silence passed. Then Spock tried to haul himself into a sitting position. Kirk scrambled to help.

“Captain, I am capable of taking care of myself,” Spock said. His voice had a sharp edge to it.

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

Spock pulled away from Kirk. He seemed about to stand, but Kirk’s hand shot out almost unbidden to grasp his first officer by the wrist.

“Give yourself a minute, Spock.”

Spock glanced down at Kirk’s hand on his wrist and winced. He looked like he wanted to pull away, but he didn’t.

Looking at his first officer, Kirk felt his heart swell, becoming unwieldy, beating reluctantly. Spock pointedly looked away from Kirk’s hand and winced harder.

“I do not wish to ask anything of you,” Spock ground out.

“Well you didn’t ask, did you?” Kirk smiled. “I wish you had. Would have made a few things a lot easier.”

“The fact that you would describe this sort of emotional entanglement as ‘easy’ demonstrates precisely why I was right to keep—”

Blessed silence. Internally, Kirk preened. He’d finally figured out how to shut Spock up.

Kirk separated his lips from Spock’s after a moment’s contact, pulling away just far enough to whisper, “See? Easy.”

Rolling his eyes, Spock tugged his arm out of Kirk’s grasp and realigned their hands so that his first and second fingers lay across Kirk’s.

“You may come to regret this,” breathed Spock. He leaned in so their chests brushed lightly.

“You had me at ‘come’,” replied Kirk. And smirked.

Spock honored the remark with a snort, then closed the distance between his lips and Kirk’s. Where Kirk’s kiss had been quick and chaste, Spock’s was deep and wide and hungry. He wedged Kirk’s lips open with his tongue and dove into his captain’s mouth like it was an Olympic sport. Kirk went with it.

A very long few minutes later, Kirk broke off, breathless. “Holy shit,” he panted. “Where have you been hiding this animal?”

“You have yet to comprehend the full extent of the Vulcan psyche,” replied Spock mildly. “You may comprehend a good deal more in approximately two years.”

“Why? What’s in two years?”

Spock answered only with a remorseless kiss.


End file.
